


I got my finger on the trigger (but I don’t know who to trust)

by tigriswolf



Series: comment_fic drabbles [250]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Thieves, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Child Abuse, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-19 23:27:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3628248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/pseuds/tigriswolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They apply to the same colleges and Bucky gets accepted everywhere but Steve doesn’t.</p><p>Steve likes to think, later, that if they’d gone to the same school, things would’ve turned out differently. He’s smart enough to know better, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I got my finger on the trigger (but I don’t know who to trust)

**Author's Note:**

> Title: I got my finger on the trigger (but I don’t know who to trust)  
> Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Bruce Springsteen  
> Warnings: modern-day AU; References to violence/death; implied child abuse  
> Pairings: Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes  
> Rating: PG  
> Wordcount: 1860  
> Point of view: third  
> Prompt: any, any/any, I want to carve our initials in the bark of everyone who ever hurt you.

Steve Rogers and Jim Barnes meet when they're nine. Steve lives with his ma on the fourth floor, apartment C; Jim just moved in with his aunt on sixth floor, apartment E. They're not the only kids in the place but they're the only ones who hang out in the courtyard -- Steve likes decorating with sidewalk chalk and he notices one day that the new kid is slowly working his way closer, eyes wide as he stares at the picture Steve's designing. 

Rory Tidwell (apartment 3B) has tried stealing Steve's chalk before but Steve (according to most everyone who isn't Ma) is a ferocious little shit, so Rory backed off right quick.

Steve holds out the blue piece. “Wanna draw?” he asks. 

.

Jim becomes Bucky that first afternoon. It’ll be a long time before he explains that his dad used to call him Jim and he wants nothing to do with anything of his dad’s. That first day, he’s still got bruises on his shoulders, but Steve doesn’t see them. Steve notices, though, the careful way Bucky moves. He doesn’t mention it. 

.

The kids in the complex leave Steve alone; the kids at school don’t. Luckily, Bucky’s enrolled in Steve’s school and even though Steve complains about it, there’s not much he can do when Bucky declares himself Steve’s protector and starts jumping into Steve’s fights. Later, Steve would like to say he stopped getting into so many, if only to keep Bucky safe, but he doesn’t. He actually gets in more. 

Steve likes art and history; Bucky likes science and math. After school they go to Steve’s apartment and help each other with the homework before going outside to courtyard. 

Years pass. When they’re sixteen, Bucky’s dad tries to get custody from his aunt and Bucky finally tells Steve, curled up on Steve’s bed beneath the covers, exactly why he doesn’t want to go back. 

“We’ll run away together,” Steve promises because he has no idea where James Barnes Senior is. “I swear, we’ll run and they won’t be able to find us.” 

Bucky’s dad doesn’t get custody. The one day he comes by 6E, Steve and Bucky aren’t there, but Bucky’s neighbor helpfully tells them all about it – how Bucky’s aunt and dad got into a fight but he left when she called the cops. 

.

Steve wants to join the military in some capacity and then realizes he can’t as he researches deeper into the politics of it. Bucky breathes a sigh of relief. 

Bucky wants to build things. 

They apply to the same colleges and Bucky gets accepted everywhere but Steve doesn’t.

Steve likes to think, later, that if they’d gone to the same school, things would’ve turned out differently. He’s smart enough to know better, though. 

.

To be completely and totally honest, Steve never set out to become a criminal. But he saw how the rich just got richer and the poor just got poorer, and he’s always loved the legend of Robin Hood. So… maybe it was always coming and maybe it wasn’t, but this guy he was friends with in college became the scapegoat of a multi-million dollar scam, and Steve just –

Something snaps. 

Steve likes history, likes reading, and while he’s not book smart, exactly, he knows how to connect things. 

He stays in school until he graduates, but he cuts off contact with Bucky, all the way across the country and top of his class. 

.

He starts small but he catches attention. He gets underestimated a lot, but he uses that. He finds out who the best of the best are, and he woos them to his cause. 

It shouldn’t be as easy as it is. 

He destroys every link back to Steve Rogers, to Ma, and he swears it’s the best thing to do, to keep his family safe. 

.

When he’s thirty-two, Steve gets caught in a double-cross and almost dies; his team isn’t as lucky. 

He wakes up in the hospital to Ma crying and holding his hand, and to the most gorgeous man he’s ever seen flicking through his chart. “Pretty sure that’s confidential,” he slurs, squeezing Ma’s hand. 

“I can read it now or hack it later,” the man says while Ma smiles in relief. 

.

So, Bucky grew up pretty good. Steve hasn’t seen him since they were nineteen. He’s working at Stark Industries as assistant to the department head of Robotics, he has a Masters from CalTech and is working on his Ph.D. 

He waits until Ma leaves for lunch to glare down at Steve and say, “Fuck you very much, Rogers, I am _so_ pissed at you.” 

Apparently, Bucky has been following Steve’s career on the sly. Steve panics and tries to sit up, demanding, “Did you tell Ma?!” 

“Of course I didn’t!” Bucky shoots back. “Now, calm down, idiot, before the nurses come rushin’ in.” 

.

After he’s weaned off the good drugs, Steve’s brain starts working again and he figures out who must’ve betrayed him. He’s still not sure, though, why the cops or the feds haven’t come for him. 

Bucky and Ma stay the whole time, even though Steve tries to convince them both to leave. They have lives across the country, but neither of them listens. Ma says, “Nothin’s more important than you, baby,” while Bucky raises an eyebrow and explains that he has about a year of paid leave saved up and he’s cashing in. 

After the hospital lets him go, Bucky brings him home to his apartment in New York, even though Steve’s place is in Baltimore. Bucky just waves off his complaints and says, “Your ma’s place is too small, and your place is a rat-trap, Stevie. Till you’re back on your feet, you’re with me, so shut up about it.” 

And, well. Steve’s missed him and Ma _so much_ , so he gives in. 

.

Steve wants to think that if he’d been at the top of his game, he’d have caught on sooner. He knows, though, that Bucky’s always been smarter and sneakier. 

.

Steve never trusted Johann Schmidt, so even though Schmidt was the go-to hitter for most people who wanted one, Steve only hired him twice. The second time was for the job that got Steve’s team killed, and he believed that Schmidt died, too. Steve survived, barely, and spent a month in the hospital before living in Bucky’s guest room for five months, where he either watched TV, read books, or researched, trying to figure out what went wrong.

What went wrong is that Johann Schmidt betrayed them. He killed Dum Dum and Peggy immediately (because they were the most dangerous) and then tried to blow Monty and Steve up, faking his own death in the process.

Steve never does figure out why because he never gets the chance to ask Schmidt: Schmidt and his pet hacker Zola (who gave Steve the creeps) are both found dead in Schmidt’s apartment in Zurich. They were tortured and left to bleed out, apparently only a few weeks after Steve woke up in the hospital. 

.

Steve meets Tony Stark at the SI Winter Holidays party seven months after he should’ve died, dragged in as Bucky’s date. Stark looks at him and smirks and then launches into some new thing Bucky’s designed that makes no sense at all but will apparently revolutionize prosthetics. Steve doesn’t need to understand to be proud. 

.

In the New Year, Steve starts building his body back up. He’s still small (will always be small), but he relearns how to be flexible, how to be quick. He tries to find out who ordered Schmidt to kill them and find another team that he can trust. 

He wants to believe, later, that if he hadn’t been so single-minded, he’d have realized Bucky knew before Bucky sits down next to him on the couch and hands him a file, but he knows he would never have known until Bucky wanted him to. 

.

“You,” Bucky announces in mid-February, two weeks before he’s going to defend his dissertation, “are a dumbass.” 

Steve looks up from Natalie Rushman’s file. “I’m starting to realize that,” he says. 

.

Bucky defends his dissertation and becomes Dr. Barnes. 

Steve… doesn’t know what to do. He wants to rest. Wants to be safe. Wants to eat lunch with Ma three times a week, see movies, go to art galleries for fun instead of recon. 

Wants to kiss Bucky, sleep next to Bucky, wake up in his arms.

But. _But_. 

.

Natalie Rushman, grifter and thief who didn’t exist until five years ago. Bruce Banner, hacker and grifter who was gonna be a Ph.D. until he lost his temper one too many times. Clint Barton, hitter who refuses to take another life. 

Bucky drops each file onto Steve’s lap with a smirk and then says seriously, “If you’re gonna get back in, you’re gonna do it right.” 

.

Natalie, Bruce, and Clint will never replace Steve’s old team. But Steve has a home to return to, now, and so he’s a bit more careful with them than he was Dum Dum, Peggy, and Monty. 

. 

“You know how Robin Hood ended, right?” Bucky asks one morning. He was promoted to the head of the robotics division while Steve was gone; Bruce almost got shot by some guards and Clint almost wasn’t fast enough to save him. They’re getting too old for this, Steve thinks, sometimes. The youngest of them is Natalie and she’s pushing thirty-five. Ma’s sick, too, now, so maybe it’s time to retire. Stay home for good. 

Bucky still looks at him like Steve’s the whole world. 

Four times in the past four years someone who crossed Steve’s team was found dead. 

Steve doesn’t – 

“You won’t get tired of me if I stay around?” Steve asks, reaching out to take Bucky’s hand. 

“I’ll never get tired of you,” Bucky says. 

.

When they’re thirteen, Mike Dyson breaks Steve’s arm. He claims it’s an accident. 

Two days later, Mike Dyson falls down a flight of stairs. The only witness is Bucky and he says Mike tripped. 

.

Steve never asks. Bucky never tells. 

.

Ma dies in the spring, three months before Steve’s forty-fifth birthday. Bucky invents another thing that’ll revolutionize the field. Natalie, Bruce, and Clint send word that they’re going underground for awhile and not to worry unless they don’t make contact within a year. Stark offers Bucky another promotion and Bucky turns him down. 

Steve sketches, volunteers at three different shelters, teaches art, tutors in history. 

This isn’t the life he thought he’d have, that day he and Bucky met. It’s a life he’s enjoyed having, though. 

Four days after he scatters Ma’s ashes to the wind, Bucky says, “I found the man who ordered the hit.” Steve lowers his pencil and Bucky says, “I can deal with it, if you want.” 

.

“You won’t forget me, right?” Bucky asks before he boards the plane that’ll take him to school across the country. He’s desperately holding Steve’s hand, squeezing a little too hard. “You won’t?” 

“I’ll email, text, and call so much you’ll get sick of me,” Steve promises. 

Bucky nods and slowly, like it’s the hardest thing he’s ever done, lets go.


End file.
